


The Time of Reaping

by StopTalkingAtMe



Category: Original Work
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, Multi, Non-Consensual Bondage, Non-Consensual Oral Sex, Rape/Non-con Elements, Raped by Monsters, References to Miscarriage, Ritual Rape, Sacrifice, Sexual Sacrifice, Vines, bleak ending, folk horror, non-consensual anal sex, sexually aroused rape victim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-16 14:49:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20847095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopTalkingAtMe/pseuds/StopTalkingAtMe
Summary: To the men and women of the village, the scarecrow is an object of luck. To Thomas, who has been in the village a year but might as well still be a stranger, it's something else entirely.





	The Time of Reaping

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to whoever nominated this Original Work pairing, because you are amazing. I knew I wanted to write something for this the moment I saw it in the tag set. The final product really didn't match any of the requests for this pairing, so I made the decision to gift it to the collection: otherwise it would have been more ODAO than I was comfortable with.

When Thomas finally takes his leave of the festivities and starts back for his bed, he isn’t certain if anyone sees him leave. Only Franklin Taylor, the village smith and unofficial leader, acknowledges his departure with a curt nod of his head.

There’s no sign of Franklin’s daughter, Alice. At first he assumes she’s snuck away with the young man everyone says she’ll be married to within the turn of a season, but then Thomas sees him across the bonfire, raising an ale to his mouth and smiling. As Thomas’s gaze lingers on him, his gaze flicks up and the smile tightens. His eyes go flat and dark until Thomas looks away.

The other men huddle in conspiratorial groups, murmuring amongst themselves, and Thomas cannot shake the feeling they’re talking about him, wondering perhaps why he hasn’t moved on with the rest of the itinerant labourers. Why in God’s name he’d choose to stay.

Why _ has _ he stayed, he wonders. God knows Alverston isn’t a welcoming place: a handful of mean cottages huddled around a central square where the villagers gather at night, with more homes sparsely spread across the land. When he came here a year ago he meant only to work the harvest, get what money he could in his pocket, and move on. Yet here he is a year later, despite feeling as much a stranger as when he first arrived.

Alverston seems to Thomas to be a place out of time, set apart from the rest of the country, isolated and self-sufficient. Perhaps that’s the reason why he’s stayed: not for the plentiful work or for Alice Taylor’s dark eyes, but because this is a place that is easily forgotten.

It’s a humid night, the heat of the long day lying over the land like a blanket. The moon has emerged from behind the clouds and its light spills across the world, gilding everything with a wash of liquid silver. He sees the fields rising up beyond the village, demarcated by the outlines of ancient hedgerows, the distant outline of the barn which he has shared this summer with the other labourers. He will have that to himself now. The others have all moved on with unseemly haste. The most superstitious amongst them even spat when they received their pay, warding off imagined bad luck.

The same thing happened last summer, although he was too distracted then by his own troubles and the ache of his healing ribs. He didn’t take much notice of his fellow workers, how they pretended to ignore the girls that watched them work, giggling as they plaited sheaves of wheat into little dancing figures.

And then there’s the scarecrow.

The temptation to ignore it tugs at him, but that would be foolish and so instead he forces himself to look directly at it, unease itching at the back of his neck. The scarecrow’s arms are spread wide like a figure of Christ, fastened to the cross-section of its post with fraying hempen twine. Its face is a hessian sack, with slashed eye-holes stitched up with twine.

He’s not a superstitious man, but he still doesn’t like the damned thing. The other labourers refused to go anywhere near it, and perhaps that sort of credulous fear is catching, because in the early days, when he first arrived, he couldn’t bring himself to look too closely at it.

Occasionally, he’d seem to see it moving in the corner of his eye, as though its hessian-covered face turned to look at him. Or the arms would seem to strain against the ropes that held them as though it were trying to reach for him. But he isn’t a child any more, and to the villagers it seems a token of good luck. Particularly the women. He often sees them gathered around it to gossip, or touching it the way his mother used to touch a wooden surface for luck, and so eventually his fear receded. Mostly. It never quite went away entirely, and it returns now, creeping back in full force.

Its position appears to have changed. His imagination, of course: it has to be, but still… It does seem to be standing a little straighter, rather than dangling from the post.

A noise in the hedgerow. The branches stirring. His gaze snaps up, the unease intensifying.

“Who’s there?”

He’s answered by a soft laugh.

Alice Turner comes slipping out from the shelter of the hedge, her hair silvery in the moonlight. She looks like she might have stepped out from one of the tales his mother used to tell him, cautionary tales of the Good Folk, of faerie-women who tempt good honest men away from the safety of iron and their hearths… But that reminds him of another strange thing about Alverston: they don’t tell stories of the Good Folk here, nor of witches, or of giants, or of any of the tales men tell themselves to make sense of the world.

“Did I scare you?” Alice asks, smiling.

“You only startled me a little, is all,” he says. Her smile isn’t friendly, but the smile of someone who holds secrets close, and he does not like it. Nor is he entirely certain that he likes _ her _, but it’s been so long since he had female company and she is beautiful.

He danced with her earlier this night; when the unmarried women of the village picked out their partners, she chose Thomas. He would have said no if he could, but he knew enough to know that’s not the way things are done in Alverston. His throat tightened when he recognised the dark metallic scent that clung to her. When he put his hand to the small of her back, the back of her dress was damp and there were fragments of moss tangled in her hair along with the wilting flowers.

At first, unwilling to take part in whatever game she was playing, he meant to keep the dance short, but then the music started, an insistent drumbeat which started slow and began to speed up until they were whirling about the fire, and he gave himself up to the rhythm of thumping feet and the song of the fiddles, and the press of the warm body against his. He would have stayed forever with her in his arms, her head tilted up towards his and her eyes shining.

But it couldn’t last forever, and soon she was peeling away from him, smiling up at his face, flushed with exertion and the heat of the fire. Sweat trickled down his spine and pooled in the small of his back as she left him frustrated and aching and wanting _ more _.

And now she’s back by his side, falling into step beside him. Her lips are wet and shining, stained with the juice of berries. “I’ll see you home to your bed,” she says.

He hesitates. Her sly smile sets his nerves on edge. He glances back along the track, expecting to see half a dozen village boys gathered there, ready to beat him within an inch of his life, then drag him to the bounds and make sure, one way or another, that he never comes back, but there’s no one there, nothing there, only the far-off glow of the bonfire. It seems very far away, as though he’s come further than he realised.

“I remember the way,” he says. He tries to sound curt, as if he has no interest in her, but he never has been much of a liar.

She takes no offence. “I know a quicker way,” she says, refusing to be cowed. She tugs on him, not north towards the communal barn, but towards the opening in the hedge where she was hiding. Has she been waiting for him, picking berries and crushing them between her teeth until they stained her lips and fingers?

“Through the fields?”

Her eyes flicker closed, a flash of her teeth. Then she’s gone, squeezing through a gap in the hedge, vanishing into its depths. There’s an opening there, as dark as the mouth of a cave. He hesitates, then he hears her calling his name, and the sound of it on her lips floods his belly with heat. He takes a breath and ducks inside.

Thorns scratch at him, catching at his clothes and skin as he squeezes through. There’s something dead here: he can smell the reek of decay and there are bones inside the hedge, countless tiny bones dangling from the brambles. He thinks it the natural work of a predator, until he sees the tiny skull of a rodent circling gently when his breath catches it. A length of twine has been threaded through the eye sockets and knotted tight. He recoils, and then Alice is grasping at him and pulling him through.

He tumbles out onto the ground, his skin stinging where he’s been scratched, wishing he pretended he never met her and carried on his way. And then she’s coming towards him, and he takes it back: even if it means he can’t stay in Alverston, right now he’s drunk and lonely enough to pay that price. Not like he likes it here all that much anyway.

Her bare feet leave light impressions on the ground, so at least he knows she’s no fairy; just trouble of a very different kind. No doubt his mother would still have warned him off her, he thinks and starts to laugh, but then he sees her expression and he stops laughing. He holds his hand out, says hoarsely, “Come here.”

She makes a move as if to obey then stops, head tilted to one side. “Why’d you come to Alverston?”

“A broken heart. Are you going to come here?”

“Tell me what happened, and who knows, I might.”

He hesitates, but the drink has loosened his tongue. He wants to speak, he realises, wants to tell her everything. “I fell in love,” he says. “There was a woman, back in the place I used to live.”

“What was her name?”

“Elizabeth?”

“And she didn’t love you back?”

“No,” he says, wriggling closer. He reaches out so his fingers brush against her ankle. “That was the worst of it – she did.” He hesitates, and when he continues his voice has a wooden quality. “But she was already married, and when her husband found out, she had to make a decision and she didn’t choose me. Her husband had a lot of friends and I did not, so matters would’ve ended very badly for me if I’d stayed.”

It’s not quite the truth, but it’ll do for now; for her, it’ll do. She doesn’t need to know what really happened to Elizabeth, the way she died, bloody sheets and shift and thighs, the wet shapeless mess wrapped in cloth, and her husband’s hollow staring eyes that clung to vengeance because he couldn’t yet face his heartache. He’d been lucky: Thomas hadn’t been given the choice. All he could do was run.

“Do you make a habit of seducing women in the villages and towns you pass through?” Alice asks.

He almost laughs at that. “I thought you were seducing me.”

“Do you call this a seduction?”

“I don’t know what the hell this is.” And suddenly he’s tired, sick of her games and teasing. If she wants to fuck him, she can damned well fuck him. He holds out his hand, his voice harder, more demanding. “Come here,” he repeats and she bares her teeth at him.

“I’m afraid I’m not such easy quarry,” she says.

He frowns, about to ask her what she means, and then she turns and is off through the field, light on her feet and as fast as a hare. Her laughter rings out as he scrambles to his feet, half-cursing, half-laughing, and yells at her to come back, knowing she won’t, knowing that if he wants her – and God help him, he does want her – it’s up to him to catch her.

And then he’s after her, stumbling at first, then picking up speed as his blood gets up. His heart pounds at the thrill of the chase. Ahead of him, her dress flashes like the tail of a rabbit, luring him on. She’s fast on her feet while his boots slow him down, but he’s taller than her by far and he quickly gains on her.

He increases his pace to a sprint. Three hard loping strides and he’s on her. He catches her in his arms and swings her up and around, his momentum carrying them forward so they tumble to the ground. Thomas twists his body so he hits the ground first. She lands on top of him and he rolls quickly, pinning her down before she can escape.

Breathless, he grins down at her. Dizzied from the chase, he barely notices that she isn’t smiling any more as he hooks a fingers beneath the neckline of her dress.

“I claim my prize,” he says.

“And you shall have it.”

The sound of her voice makes him hesitate. Her eyes are dark, her expression grave. The wind rustles through the stubble of harvested wheat, yet to be ploughed back into the soil.

Something prickles at his neck.

Thomas looks up. Something dark rises out of the ground. A wooden post, weathered and stained dark, with a cross-beam at shoulder height. It’s an unfamiliar sight, and at first he’s certain that he’s never seen it before, until he realises that he _ has _. Many times.

The scarecrow’s cross, standing empty.

Puzzled, he frowns. “Where did–”

The blow comes from behind. It connects with the back of his head and knocks him sideways. The world spins, flaring bright with the explosion of pain in the base of his skull.

Alice squeezes out from beneath him. Her face is white, bleached of colour as she stares up at the dark figure looming over them, her mouth a gaping hole. At first he thinks she’s screaming, and then he realises that she’s laughing. Thomas’s vision is blurred from the blow, so he can’t see the figure clearly as it takes a shambling step closer, and he knows only that he doesn’t want to see it clearly, that he has to get away. His fingers claw at the ground as it stoops towards him, grips him beneath his armpits and hauls him up. He howls, kicking out, shuddering at the pops of agony in his head at his struggles, as it drags him forward, unnaturally strong. Alice dances alongside them with the look of a celebrant. The man –_ dear God, it must be a man, surely _ – says nothing, so he begs her to help him, to have mercy, and threatens her when begging does not work. He hits out at the man holding him, but it barely reacts to his blows.

When it slams his back against the post, a spike of dizzying pain blossoms behind his eyes so acute that for a moment the world splinters apart. When he comes to one arm is bound to the crossbar, hanging from one arm, and the man is binding his other wrist to the post. He cranes his head, but he still can’t see the man clearly, his vision still blurred. Obviously this is a trick, an attempt to frighten him, to scare off the stranger who should never have been foolish enough to stay where he was not wanted, Not her young man: the build is wrong, tall and scrawny rather than stocky and well-muscled. It could be one of his friends, although no one springs to mind.

Its clothes are filthy, rags stiff with dirt and mildew, but it’s unnaturally strong, its fingers clamping his arm tight to the cross-bar while it binds him until he’s held tight, arms outstretched like a man crucified. Only his feet have been left unbound.

He spits at Alice. “If you’re trying to scare me, It won’t work,” he says, although it will work. It already _ has _worked.

“Hush,” she says, and the bitch is actually smiling as she approaches. 

He sets his back against the post and uses it to boost himself off, kicking at her with both feet. She dances easily out of reach, in no danger. She must have seen it coming a mile off, but pouts at him, mock-hurt.

Behind him the tramp of heavy footsteps. He flinches, squirming away as gloved hands reach around to grip his cheeks and drag his head back, holding him fast so she can come closer.

“You told me why you came to Alverston, or part of it at least, but not why you stayed.” Her hand rests on his chest. “Why did you stay, Thomas?”

“Because I’m a stupid bastard,” he says, and her eyes glint. The smile is gone now, her expression solemn.

“You stayed,” she tells him softly, “for this. He brought you here, Thomas. You heard him calling and you stayed.”

“This isn’t funny,” he says. “You’ve made your point. You want me gone, fine, I’ll go. I’ll go.”

“Hush.” She rises up on tiptoes and kisses him, just the soft brush of her lips against his cheek. “I hope you realise how grateful we all are for your sacrifice.”

“My… my what?”

“For what it’s worth,” she adds, her eyes filled with sadness, “I really am sorry.” And then she’s gone.

“What did you say?” He cranes his head, straining against the grip that holds him tight. The mad bitch. Her and all the rest of them, this village of lunatics; he’d known right from the start there was something wrong about it. His voice rises up, inching towards hysteria, even though he knows it’s all a trick. He struggles, wrenching against his bonds. “Goddamn you, Alice, come back!”

The hands release him. In the sudden freedom his body slumps to one side, and he freezes. Listening. It exhales, a scratchy rattling sound, a gust of breath that reeks of stale air. But it doesn’t do anything, only waits.

“Let me go,” he says, his voice low. “Let me go and I swear I’ll leave. She’s had her fun, her little game. I meant her no harm, no harm at all, just let me go, let me go, _ let me go! _”

He strains against his bonds, wrenching at them. The rope cuts into his wrists, but he keeps hauling on them until his bones creak, until it feels as if he might pull his arms out of their sockets, until he wants to scream from the pain in his joints and his wrists.

When it moves, he goes still. A chill sensation creeps over his skin. Whoever it is, whatever it is, it’s wrong. It’s made no sound all this time, only watched, silent except for the occasional scratching sound of its breathing. And it reeks: of the earth, of mould and mildew, of the rotting thing he found in the heart of the hedge. It doesn’t smell like a man, and it doesn’t move like one either.

It shambles closer, stooped and shrivelled, and he catches a glimpse of it at the edge of his vision: a face wrinkled like an old apple, moonlight glinting on dead white eyes. Lips peel back from a rictus grin, as it reaches for him, and he wrenches his head away, unable to make himself look at it any longer.

But not being able to see it is worse. It grips his head from behind again, and its fingers probe at the corners of his lips, trying to force his mouth open. He keeps it clenched tight, but it keeps probing. Its touch feels wrong too, tight leather gloves stretched over bony fingers, but the tips of the fingers have a rough calloused texture, and there’s something sharp about the ends of them as though the nails have pierced through the leather.

Or maybe it’s not wearing gloves at all.

His mind reels away from that possibility, and then he cannot think, because his throat is closing up with revulsion and panic. The fingers twist against his clenched teeth as it pulls him back against the post. Its other hand strokes his forehead with a gentle touch, as though it means to sooth him, while it levers his jaws apart. It’s winning. It’s so strong it might snap his jaw right off.

The pressure of the post against the place where he was struck sends needles of agony shooting through his skull. He takes short sharp breaths through his nose, a crushing sensation screaming in his chest. It’s not enough air: he needs to breathe, to open his mouth and take great gulps of air then scream and scream and scream, in terror and pain and fury.

This is a battle he cannot win. Instead he chooses another tack. When he opens his mouth he means to bite down hard on its fingers, to bite them off if he must, but his teeth close on leather and bone, and the fingers twist against his tongue. They taste foul, of salt and dirt and something bitter, and he retches.

The thing makes a rasping hiss that’s partway between triumph and sorrow, and its other hand moves so fast he can do nothing to stop it from stuffing something into his mouth, a balled-up wad of fabric. Then they snake out, leaving him struggling to breathe, the cloth too close to his throat.

And still it doesn’t relent. While he pushes at the gag with his tongue, trying to push it forward so he can spit it out, something is drawn over his head like the hood of a condemned man. Dazed as he is, at first he doesn’t recognise the loosely woven fabric, the way the light glints through the stitched-up eye-holes slashed in the hessian. The scarecrow’s mask.

His skin crawls in revulsion. He fights to quiet his muffled sobs, sucking in air through his nose. For a long time nothing happens, and he thinks – he prays – that this is all they mean to do, frighten him and leave him gagged and blindfolded until morning. That’s something he can bear.

He can hear it, though, that awful rasping breathing and its uneven footsteps as it circles him. His anger drains away drip by drip, until there’s nothing left but fear as he hears it behind him, coming closer. He works at the gag in his mouth with his tongue, trying to make room to speak, but nothing comes out except a wordless plea for mercy. It sounds like the whine of an animal.

Hot tears burn their way down his cheeks, soaking into the folds of the hessian. He thinks of Elizabeth, casting a wry sideways glance at him and murmuring, “You’ll get yourself into trouble one of these days.” And all he wants at this moment is to see her again, to hold her and tell her how sorry he is, except she’s gone and he’ll never get to do any of those things again.

Every sense sharpens to a needlepoint. He focuses on the thing, aware of the itch of dried sweat on his skin, the fresh sweat dampening his armpits and groin and the small of his back. He tries to think of it as a man and not a thing, and finds he can’t.

Beneath his feet, the ground shifts. Something comes coiling up over his boots, brushing against his ankle beneath the hem of his trouser leg. A moment later it’s matched by another at his other leg. Hie first thought that they are grass snakes and he tries to kick them away, but they cling tight, their burred bodies catching on the fabric and his leg hair. They climb higher, coiling around his calves, the back of his knees where the skin is tender and damp with sweat. Their bodies prickle against his skin like bristle-grass. Their passage is painless, their touch gentle: it sends goosebumps shivering across his skin, but he can feel resistance when he tries to kick them away, as if they’re rooted in the ground. At mid-thigh, they stop, coiled around his legs like ribbons on a maypole, and there they wait.

He’s dreaming. He must be dreaming. Thomas lifts his head towards the sky and sees the stars as a spiralling blur of light around the bloated face of the moon. He can see _ it _, too, a hunched silhouette to his right, clearly outlined in the silver moonlight, but he doesn’t want to look at it. By now, he knows what he’ll see.

Gradually, so slowly he doesn’t realise it’s happening until it’s too late, the coiling things start to tighten. He fights it, his straining at his bonds redoubling, but they pull tighter, drawing his legs inexorably apart, until he stands with his feet planted just wider than a normal stance and fastened firmly to the ground as though mired in mud.

The scarecrow comes closer.

He flinches when it sets its hands upon his waist, shudders in horror as it begins to unfasten his trousers. A groan of protest escapes the gag, and its movements stop. It lifts its head, and he glimpses its face through the sack, the skin like old leather, an eye glazed milky white and glistening like mother-of-pearl. It peers blindly at him through filthy elf-locks as he presses back against the post, his throat closing tight.

He shakes his head, letting out frantic moans of fear, thumping his head against the post, each spike of pain a blessed thing because it distracts him from the horror of what is happening. The pain is searing, glorious; it whispers to him the promise of blacking out, tells him that this is a dream from which he might still wake up, even as the scarecrow yanks his trousers down, baring his private parts. Then it straightens, joints creaking like unoiled hinges, and slips its hand between his head and the post to cushion him.

Long fingers close on his upper arm, and he squeezes his eyes tight, not wanting to look at it. A sound whistles out of it, rough and hoarse, an uneven sibilant hiss that it takes him a moment to recognise: it’s _ hushing _ him. Trying – he shudders at this realisation – to be gentle. It leans in, bringing its face closer to his. The hand cushioning his head turns, the fingers burrowing like lice into his hair, as it presses its mouth over his through the sack.

Its lips part and something dry rubs against the hessian, sliding over his clenched tight lips, its tongue, its fucking _ tongue, _ while the fingers of its other hand run spider-like over his belly and down the front of his thighs to where his cock nestles in his pubic hair. He squeezes his eyes harder, pressing hard against the post, and again it comes, that soft sibilant hiss. Fingers closes gently around his soft penis, teasing it out into a waiting palm.

And then it’s retreating and he exhales, hot tears easing out from between his eyes. It releases his cock, but the moment of relief doesn’t last, because the scarecrow is dropping to its knees.

Thomas hauls against the rope and vines, but they don’t budge. A cool breath stirs his skin, and despite his fear, his cock stiffens a little at the sensation of long bony fingers tugging gently on his balls and the touch of its tongue, dry, but muscular and pliant, rolling against the length of his cock. He turns his head away, cheeks burning with the shame of being held like this, exposed and helpless, while the entire village might be watching from the edge of the field, delighting in his humiliation.

A trick, he thinks, and never mind how dry that tongue is or his glimpse of that wet, white eye. Nothing human has eyes like that. Nothing alive. He tries not to picture the mouth that must be gaping open like a cave, while the tongue twists and writhes against his stiffening length and the tugging fingers cup his balls and probe back towards the cleft of his buttocks.

It draws its tongue along the length of his cock from the base to the head. There’s no saliva to lubricate its way, but its touch is so slow it doesn’t matter. At the head the tongue catches in the flap of skin which it teases with a flicker. He groans, meaning _ No _, and then it closes its mouth around him, enclosing him in a hot, dry cave.

Slowly, it takes him right to the back of its throat, sliding him deeper, while its tongue and the muscles of its mouth ripple around him, and all along his legs the vines bristle in unison, a constant prickle of sensation on his skin. Its mouth is completely dry, but the light suction and the additional friction add an additional level of sensation to his slow building pleasure. He’s completely hard now, fighting the urge to push his hips towards its mouth as the head of his cock slides along the roof of its mouth when it draws him out. The lightest scrape of teeth, chapped lips, the dry tip of its tongue flicking at the slit.

He groans the word “Please,” around the gag and he doesn’t know if he means _ Please no, _ or _ Please yes _, not that it matters since it’s not going to listen either way. Then he goes still, because another tendril comes snaking up over his legs, outside of his trousers this time. It brushes against his buttocks, oozing a trail of some slick fluid over his skin. It feels pleasantly cool against his skin, and he stiffens, distracted by the arid mouth sliding back down with aching slowness over his erection.

While he’s swallowed up, the head of the vine eases between his buttocks to nudge against his arsehole. A cool wet sensation there, and he groans as it works its way inside him, stretching out the passage, that sweetly cool sensation cooling his overheated skin. It squirms, rippling inside him, and he sucks in air through his nose as he inches towards a climax that he does not think he will be able to bear.

And then, suddenly, they’re retreating, both the vine in his arsehole and the mouth on his cock. He’s left sagging on his bonds, boneless with fear and arousal. He hears the creaking of the scarecrow’s joints as it stands. A rustle of clothing. Footsteps, as it moves around behind him.

He flinches away on instinct when it puts its hands on his hips, and he moans, meaning _ no, _ meaning _ yes. _ The scarecrow hisses again, pulling his hips backwards. The vines around his legs loosen, allowing it enough slack to adjust his position and pull his hips backwards, twisting him around the post and pulling his feet mostly off the ground so his toes are scraping the ground and he’s suspended by nothing but the rope and the scarecrow’s freakish strength.

His cock strains, searching for contact, and it comes, the brush of a vine. Bristles catch on his pubic hair, but its tip is smooth and slick with fluid, wet where the scarecrow’s tongue was dry, but equally muscular. It teases at the head of his cock, slipping over it, while it coils and recoils along the length of his shaft. The movement is strange but not unpleasant, and with every moment it leaves a smear of slick fluid on his skin. Behind him the scarecrow’s finger presses inside him with the same slow care as it showed to his cock, until he’s biting down hard on the gag.

The finger is removed and is replaced with something else, something thicker and harder and less pliant than either the fingers or the vine. Half-suspended, Thomas hangs, his body twisted into an awkward position, the post pressing against his side and crushing the air from him as the scarecrow spreads his buttocks wider with one splayed hand, and eases the tip of what he assumes must be its erection inside him. The scarecrow makes its soothing hiss again, a hand caressing his buttock. His cheeks burn with shame, but the rippling sensation of the vine on his erection is like nothing he’s ever felt before, the sensation is unfamiliar but exquisite, and his cock is so hard it aches.

There is a moment’s resistance, a sensation somewhere between pleasure and pain, and he moans out around the gag in his mouth as the scarecrow begins to move. The vine too begins to coil faster, rippling over his shaft. Thomas grips the wooden crossbeam as if that could somehow steady him, fighting the shameful urge to thrust back and urge the scarecrow deeper. The vine around his cock ripples in a constant peristaltic motion, while the tip brushes across the head of his cock in practised strokes, relentlessly bringing him to orgasm.

As his seed pulses out onto the ground below, the scarecrow’s hands tighten on his hips as it thrusts itself to its peak with a sound that seems to scrape itself out of its chest.

They stay like that for a moment, locked in place, then the scarecrow’s fingers flex on his skin. It slips out of him, stumbles backwards, and the vines recede, as well leaving him slumped boneless against the post, exhausted and aching.

Something crumples behind him, and he waits, but no further sound comes, just his blood pulsing in his ears and his breath, close and ragged. After a while, he begins to work at the gag again, goes still when he sees lights glimmering through the sacking.

Figures are drawing closer across the fields, some carrying lanterns. The women of the village, approaching in clumps of twos and threes. He sees Alice amongst their number, her eyes bright, her face flushed.

He grunts as she reaches up and pulls the sacking up over his face. He blinks. The women watch him with faces that are joyous and bright. Alice removes his gag too, gingerly as though she fears he might bite her, but he doesn’t: he’s too grateful to be free of it.

“You’ve had your fun,” he says, trying to sound forgiving than angry. In truth he doesn’t sound like either: his voice is hoarse and desperate, terrified. A couple of the women giggle. “Now let me down.”

“Soon,” she whispers, “very soon, I promise.” When she brings him a drink of water, he swallows it down gratefully, letting it sooth his painful throat. He tells himself he has no reason to disbelieve her and allows himself to feel relief that his ordeal is almost over. He’s done well, she tells him. They’re all very grateful, she tells him, and it wasn’t really so very bad, was it?

She pauses at that as if she expects an answer, and wanting only to please her, he shakes his head. “No,” he croaks. “No, it wasn’t.”

“You have a place amongst us now,” she tells him. “You belong here, Thomas.”

He sags against his bonds, laughing shakily. Only a rite of initiation after all. As if he’d stay after this, he thinks, but even now, he recognises it for the lie it is. He cannot deny the desperate joy he feels at her words, at the thought of finally having a place in the world and a meaning to his life. He’d never thought to find such a thing again after Elizabeth. “Let me down,” he begs, and her face softens into a mask of regret.

“Oh,” she says, “But we’re not done yet.”

She stuffs the gag back into his mouth, snatching her fingers away from his teeth even though he’s too busy staring at her uncomprehending to bite her. Someone else tugs the hessian sack down at her nod. Rope is looped around his ankles and drawn tight so he cannot kick out or struggle or fight.

Alice was right; they’re not done yet. They won’t be done for a long time.

One by one they file past him, the women of the village, and each strokes him in turn. Some slip their hands up under his shirt to stroke his chest, while others clasp his cock, or his buttocks, or whichever part of his body they choose, and once that is done, some of their number linger on to play with him a little while longer in the endless hours until dawn.

They kiss his skin and grip his cock, stroking it to hardness while he twists and pulls at his bonds, and they’re not all as kindly as the scarecrow. Some of them rip at him with their nails or cut his skin with knives so his blood runs out to spill on the soil to mix with his seed. They are relentless. They give him no rest, and he thinks of how he seemed to see the scarecrow moving when he first came to Alverston. Reaching out like it meant to grab him. Or to beg for help.

He thinks of the woman, too, of how they’d gather around it and touch it for luck, and when he remembers the water flasks dangling from their hands his courage breaks.

If it wasn’t for the gag, he would have screamed.


End file.
